


the other side of the sky

by nezumiprefersdanielleovershakespeare



Category: No. 6 (Anime & Manga), No. 6 - All Media Types, No. 6 - Asano Atsuko
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 11:32:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11289861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nezumiprefersdanielleovershakespeare/pseuds/nezumiprefersdanielleovershakespeare
Summary: The world is divided by a wall of glass, and Shion and Nezumi live on different sides of it.





	the other side of the sky

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote and posted this fic in December, 2013. 
> 
> I'm reposting some of my old fics from the many accounts I previously deleted over the past few years, so if you're familiar with my fics and want to request that I repost a certain old fave, feel free to message me at my tumblr: http://coolasamackerel.tumblr.com or comment on this post: http://coolasamackerel.tumblr.com/post/160488980276/danielles-nezushifree-fics and I'll be happy to consider reposting it! For both my new readers and my old guys, hope you enjoy the fic!! :D

“Does the sky look different to them?”

            To Shion, the sky earlier that day had been blue and unbroken and stretchy. He’d wanted to roll it up in his palms and bounce it down the street.

            Karan rolled over in the bed they shared. Shion was seven and small enough. Karan was poor and humble enough.

            “To whom, sweetheart? And why aren’t you asleep?”

            “To the other half.” Shion couldn’t turn off his curiosity at night. It whirled and buzzed and blipped in his head, and he liked it that way, keeping him company before sleep swept him off his feet.

            “Yes. We’re all under the same sky.”

            “The glass doesn’t go all the way up?” Shion wondered. He did not know it had an end. He had been sure it stretched further than the top – the top of where, he didn’t know – that it split the sky in two and perhaps while he’d watched a blue, stretchy sky, the other half had watched rain ripping through a black and fragile ceiling.

            “It stops somewhere, honey. Try to sleep now. Mama has to wake up early tomorrow.”

            Shion nodded and silenced his words but let his thoughts run on. He knew his mother wouldn’t lie to him, but he had a feeling she was wrong. He had a feeling it looked completely different, and decided that night to the sound of his mother’s deepening breaths that one day, he would find out what it looked like on the other side of the glass, on the other side of the sky.

**

Shion was bored and fidgety while Karan baked.

            “Go play outside.”

            “There’s nothing to do outside,” Shion argued. “I read about parks in school today. Why are there no parks near us, Ma?”

            Karan sighed. The back of her palm smeared flour across her forehead in a stamp of weariness. “I’m sorry, Shion. We live in the border houses because they’re not as expensive as other houses. But because we’re by the border, the surrounding town doesn’t have much for us to do.”

            Shion thought about this. “The border of the glass?”

            “Yes.”

            “Why is it less expensive by the glass?” Shion couldn’t rationalize it. It wasn’t as if there was pollution, or noise. There was just a glass wall splitting the world down the middle and stretching to the sky.

            “People don’t like seeing the other half. It’s distressing.”

            “But why?”

            “There’s something unappealing in seeing other people without ever being able to talk to them, and knowing that other people see you, and they can never talk to you either.”

            “We see the neighbors every day, and I’ve never talked to them, and they’ve never talked to me.”

            “It’s different. You could talk to them if you wanted. But you can never talk to the other half. The glass is too thick.”

            Shion did not understand the difference, but then, he was only seven, after all. “Why is the glass there? Is the other half dangerous?”

            “No. I expect they’re just like us. Maybe in the other half, there is a seven-year-old asking his mother if we’re dangerous right at this moment, do you think?”

            Shion contemplated this and the thought excited him. “Maybe,” he hedged. He thought he might go outside after all. “But I still don’t understand why the glass is there. Why does there have to be an other side?”

            “It’s just the way the world is. There is the sky, there is the glass, there is the other side.”

            “Has anyone ever cracked the glass?”

            “I don’t know, Shion. Why would you want to crack the glass? Have you ever wanted to crack the sky?”

            But the sky was different. It wasn’t splitting the world in half – unless it was. Shion considered that there was yet _another_ half – or third, as it would be – on the other side of the sky, skimming the top of the earth. It was a bit too much for his seven-year-old thoughts to wrap around, so he bid his mother goodbye and bounded outside.

            The glass sat in his backyard, stretched to the neighbor’s yard on the right and the neighbor’s yard on the left and kept stretching both ways. He never much paid attention to it, but that day he sat himself right in front of the glass, facing the other half.

            It depicted a thick forest. Shion watched the trees, and it occurred to him that the entire other half was simply a forest and nothing else.

            Still, the day was spent in front of the glass, and when afternoon scooped him up and brought him back to his house for dinner, Karan asked the question it hadn’t even occurred to Shion to ask himself.

            “What were you doing out there, hon?”

            “Waiting,” Shion replied, without thinking. It came as much as a surprise to him as to his mother.

            “Waiting for what?”

            Shion looked at his food. He didn’t know.

            But he was excited.

**

Two weeks found Shion fourteen times in front of the glass every day after school until dinner. He did his homework out there, finding an appreciation for nature that grew every day. The woods brought no change but a few new leaves, an extra vine here or there. Shion was not an impatient person and did not lose any of his original anticipation.

            The fifteenth day rewarded his dedication. It was a Saturday, and morning had just drunk in the sky when Shion settled himself in front of the glass with a book and bucketfuls of time.

            At the sixth turn of a page, the leaves rustled.

            Shion could not hear them. The glass was too thick for that. But he could see them, from his peripheral vision, and immediately glanced up, a finger resting on his page as he leaned forward, face nearly pressed to the glass.

            He immediately reeled back as a two-headed figure catapulted out of the woods, mouths open in unrestrained but silent laughter.

            Shion blinked, realizing it was not a two-headed figure. They were two people – two people from the other half. Two people who stopped upon sight of the glass and then Shion. Two sets of eyes widened.

            One of those sets of eyes was grey.

            The grey set belonged to a boy Shion expected was his age, though he was shorter and much skinnier. Hooked around his waist were the legs of the younger girl he carried. Her hands erupted in his dark hair – hair the same color as hers. Shion could tell immediately that they were siblings. The girl could not have been older than four or five years old.

            Shion stood up. “Hi!” he exclaimed, but his voice bounced off the glass, and he remembered the other half could not hear him through the glass, no more than he could hear them.

            His first step closer to the glass brought even greater disappointment: the boy on the other side scampered back into the woods, taking his sister along with him.

            “Hey, wait!” Shion called, but the boy could not hear.

            Shion stood, waiting, sure the boy would return, but to Shion’s surprise, he did not.

            Shion only sat after hours had passed, but he did not open his book for the rest of the day.

            On Sunday, he returned to his post, but still, the boy with the grey eyes and his sister did not reappear.

            And though Shion came back every day, the boy would not reappear until the next week.

**

When the boy returned the next Saturday, two things had changed.

            One – Shion did not notice him immediately.

            Two – there was no little girl on his shoulders.

            Shion was plucking petals off a flower and murmuring below his breath. _“He’ll come today, he won’t come today, he’ll come today, he won’t come today…”_ Only after he plucked the last petal ( _He’ll come today_ ), did he look up at the glass.

            Two grey eyes peeked at him from within the trees.

            This time, Shion did not stand up. He had no wish to scare the boy again, and was wary as he offered a smile and lifted his hand in a gentle wave.

            After a minute, a body appeared along with the eyes. It crept to the glass while Shion scrutinized it.

            The boy had pale skin, almost transparent, and even more so in contrast with his dark hair that only stopped an inch above his shoulders. He was skinny, almost frail looking, but his eyes were sharp and steady.

            “Hi,” Shion said. He knew the boy could not hear him, but it felt strange not to offer a greeting.

            The boy’s lips did not move. He stood in front of the glass now, and Shion stood up as well, slowly, watching the boy the entire time.

            To his relief, he did not run away again.

            They stood and stared at each other for a full minute. Shion could not explain the racing of his heart, the pulse that seemed to rocket entirely around every inch of his body, tingling from his palms to the bottoms of his feet.

After another minute, Shion reached out – he was not sure why, as the glass still stood between them – but the moment he moved, the boy was gone.

“No!” Shion shouted.

The glass offered no reply.

**

The next day Shion brought a pad of paper, a pencil, and his mother’s warning.

            “Be careful, Shion.”

            Shion did not know what she meant. He did not think the boy was dangerous, and even if he was, there was glass between them. He explained this to his mother, who only smiled and told him to be careful nonetheless, ruffling his hair.

            Shion flattened it as he waited. He did not expect the grey-eyed boy’s return, and would have been content to wait another week, but the leaves rustled almost immediately upon Shion sitting down, and the boy was back.

            He sat in front of the glass as naturally as if he, too, had been doing this for weeks.

            Shion blinked in surprise, then quickly scribbled on his notepad.

            _Hi! My name is Shion._

He showed the paper to the boy, who did not look at it at first. His grey eyes watched Shion’s face carefully until Shion felt his cheeks burn; only then did the boy look at Shion’s note.

            He gave no reaction but to return his gaze to Shion’s expectant face. Shion narrowed his eyes, then quickly turned the pad back to him and wrote again.

            _Can you read this?_

            It had not occurred to him that the other half might not be able to read. Perhaps they even spoke another language.

            Again, the boy merely looked at the pad and back at Shion without reaction.

            Shion felt his eyebrows knitting together. This could be more difficult than he’d anticipated.

            He thought for a second, aware of the boy’s unbreaking gaze and attempting his hardest to ignore it, then began scribbling again on the pad. After a minute or two, he lifted it back to the glass, and received the first reaction from the boy.

            The grey eyes widened, and the boy leaned back.

            Shion smiled, pointed, waited until the boy looked away from the drawing and at him, and lifted his shoulders in what he hoped appeared to be a questioning shrug.

            A very rough sketch of the boy, with a girl riding on his shoulders, blemished his paper. Shion was pointing at the girl.

            The boy stared at Shion, his expression unreadable. After a full minute, when Shion had resigned himself to the fact that he hadn’t been understood again, the boy raised a hand and pointed behind him, into the forest.

            He had understood Shion’s question, and was answering it.

            Shion smiled and nodded. He inched a bit closer to the wall, and the boy inched back.

            Shion understood – the boy was shy. Shion didn’t mind.

            The rest of the day had Shion drawing pictures for the boy. He was not an artist in the slightest, but did his best to depict his mother and a few of his favorite foods, as well as his classroom and a drawing of his friend Safu. He did not know what the boy understood, if he even understood any of it, as he offered no more reactions.

            Still, he didn’t leave, not until the sky began to blush and Shion knew his mother would be calling him back at any moment.

            The boy stood, and Shion waved goodbye at him. He did not wave back before turning and disappearing back in the woods.

            It was only that night in bed that Shion realized he had not seen the boy’s smile. He made it his mission to earn it the next day, hoping more than he’d hoped for anything before that the boy would return.

**

He did return, and this time, with a pad of paper of his own and a pencil tucked behind an ear, jutting out of his dark curtain of hair.

            Shion was overjoyed. He waved and smiled his greeting as the boy sat across from him. It was Monday, and Shion had only been able to come after school finished. He couldn’t help but wonder if the boy had been waiting for him within the trees the entire day, or if he had school too.

            Shion decided to teach the boy his name, somehow. He drew a flower on his notepad and offered it to the boy, but when he looked up, the boy was scribbling something as well. Shion waited in excitement, trying to imagine what the boy would draw.

            When he lifted his pad as well, however, he had not drawn anything. Instead, he had written one word.

            _Yes._

            Shion blinked. The boy could read. It was a moment before Shion realized he was answering his question from the day before.

            Shion was quick to flip his drawing of the flower over and write back.

            _Why didn’t you give some reply yesterday?_

The boy read it, but again gave no reply.

            Shion exhaled in frustration, scribbled again.

            _What’s your name?_

            The boy merely looked at him. Shion could swear his lips had turned up the smallest bit. Was the boy laughing at him?

            _Was that your sister the first day? Why doesn’t she come back?_

            The boy read, and to Shion’s joy, reached for his pencil again.

            _She’s shy._

            _Like you,_ Shion wrote back.

            The boy’s eyes narrowed, not in anger, but confusion. Shion wondered if he had misunderstood the boy. No, he wasn’t shy. He was…cautious.

            The realization hit Shion and immediately fit. He smiled, happy to finally be getting to know this boy.

            _When will you tell me your name?_

A pause, then, _You have to earn it._

            Shion looked up, startled, and this time the smile – though small – was undeniable on the boy’s face.

            Shion felt himself grinning back as a reflex, though he was frustrated. Still, he embraced the challenge.

            _How do I earn it?_

            _I can’t tell you that._

_How old are you?_

No reply.

            _I’m seven,_ Shion wrote. _In second grade. Do you go to school?_

            Again, no reply.

            _It’s not fair if only I talk. You have to talk back._

            The boy read this, tilted his head, then stood up. Shion immediately regretted his frustration.

            “No, don’t go!” he shouted, then remembered and immediately scribbled the words on his pad, shoving them at the glass, but there was no longer anyone behind it to read them.

            Shion sighed and threw himself on the ground.

            Still, his body buzzed with happiness.

**

A month passed, and Shion still did not earn the boy’s name.

            He did, however, earn his age (almost eight, like Shion), his sister’s age (just turned four), and decently consistent replies – at least, in comparison to the first day.

            By the beginning of the fifth week of their notepad conversations, Shion chanced lifting his hand to the glass again.

            The boy, sitting cross-legged across from him, did not run away. He stared at Shion’s palm curiously.

            Shion removed it to write a quick note before replacing it on the glass.

            _Put your hand against mine. It can be our greeting and our goodbye._

            The boy narrowed his eyes. Shion was certain he would not do it, but left his hand against the glass anyway, watching the boy carefully.

            A minute passed, and then another, and then the boy was leaning forward, placing his own palm against Shion’s.

            Shion knew he wouldn’t be able to feel it, but was disappointed that the glass stayed just as cool. He noticed that his palm was bigger than the boy’s.

            The boy moved his hand first, to scribble on his pad.

            _You’re a dork,_ Shion read, and looked up in surprise to see the boy’s grin cracked open.

            He was laughing.

            Shion laughed back. He wrote a quick note back, then shook his head and turned the page before showing it to the boy.

            _What did you just write?_ the boy on the other side asked.

            _Nothing,_ Shion replied.

            The boy’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t press it.

            Before they left the glass that afternoon, both boys pressed their hands against the glass again.

**

There were days when Shion showed up at the glass and the boy was not present. There were days when he himself couldn’t make it to the glass, and he was left wondering if the boy sat and waited, like Shion did when the boy wasn’t there, or if he only stood around for a minute before leaving.

            By the third month, Shion asked what he had been wondering since the very first day.

            _What does the sky look like, on your side?_

            The boy read with narrowed eyes, then looked up. Shion watched his grey eyes scan the sky before looking up at his own sky. It was ridiculously yellow, that day, with pale patches like faded wallpaper.

            Shion wrote this down and showed it to the glass, waiting as the boy wrote his own response.

            _Worn out yellow,_ the boy had written.

            Shion smiled at his response. _I guess we’re under the same sky,_ he wrote.

            _Obviously,_ the boy replied, and he accompanied his reply with a roll of his eyes that Shion laughed at.

            When the yellow sky began turning orange, Shion took a chance.

            _Can I meet your sister tomorrow?_

            The boy took his time to reply, his pencil hovered over his paper for a full two minutes before he wrote his response.

            _Maybe,_ his paper read.

            Shion smiled as the boy lifted his palm to the glass. Shion put his palm against it and stood, already looking forward to the next afternoon spent with the boy from the other side.

**

The maybe became a yes as the boy came out of the woods with the girl from before on his shoulders.

            Shion held his hand against the glass instinctively, and the boy placed his sister on the grass beside him before pressing his palm against the glass Shion touched.

            They sat, and Shion waved to the girl.

            _Can she read?_

            The boy began to reply, but the girl stole his notepad.

            _Yes, I can,_ came her messy reply.

            Shion laughed.

            _It’s nice to meet you._

_What’s your name?_

_Shion. What’s yours?_

The girl laughed, and Shion didn’t understand until he read her reply. _My brother says I can’t tell you._

_I guess you can’t tell me his name either, can you?_

The girl did not write back, but answered with a laugh Shion could not hear and a cheerful nod of her head. She proceeded to throw the pad and pencil on the ground beside her and climb into her brother’s lap. Shion watched her say something to him, and he shook his head once, then rolled his eyes and nodded. She laughed again, and the boy began to braid her long, dark hair.

            Shion watched them in silence. He had never had a sibling, and had never known he’d wanted one, but there was something nice in the way the boy interacted with his sister. It was a side of him that Shion had not seen even after three months of getting to know him. He seemed most at ease, and his smiles came easily and laughter naturally. He seemed warmer, somehow, his grey eyes less intense but equally vivid.

            Shion was glad the boy had allowed him to meet his sister. That night, he raised both hands against the glass, one lower than the other.

            The boy, as usual, placed his palm against Shion’s, while the girl slapped his other hand quickly, laughing as she ran into the forest without her brother.

            The boy, his hand still on the glass, looked at Shion, who spoke, knowing it was pointless but not caring. “Thank you,” he said.

            The boy nodded, slipped his hand off the glass, and followed his sister with a run.

**

 One day four months after Shion met the boy’s sister and seven months after they’d begun conversing, Shion was sitting by the glass after school, waiting for the boy’s arrival.

            He was reading, as he sometimes did when he waited for the boy, but his attention was stolen from his pages by the glass a few minutes in. He stared at it without quite knowing why. There seemed something liquid about it, he realized. It almost seemed to be swaying.

            Shion reached out to touch it. It was just as solid as it always had been, but to Shion’s surprise, it was warm.

            Shion stared at it, and it darkened, hazed, wobbled. It wasn’t until he looked up above the trees on the other side that Shion understood.

            The woods were on fire.

            Shion was on his feet immediately, his book forgotten by his side. He knew the boy and his sister lived within the woods, in a small village in a clearing just outside the center of it.

            He wanted to yell, but did not know what he would shout, nor at whom. In a minute, he could see sparks of the flame between the trees by the glass, and another minute after that it was not just sparks but the entire flaming beast itself, devouring the trunks and then creeping over to press against the glass.

            Shion yelped, jumped back, but the flame went no further but to push the glass with greedy claws of red and orange that could not reach him.

            Shion stared in horror for a second more, then ran to his house.

            “Ma! Ma, come quick!”

            Karan ran to him. “Shion, what is it – ?”

            “Come on!” Shion grabbed her hand – his was sweating – and pulled her out the back door where she froze, and he froze with her.

            The glass was a wall of angry red, orange, yellow. It quivered in solidity, stopped in its place and enraged to find itself encaged. Shion heard shouts and turned to see his neighbors in their yards as well, staring at the wall of fire that stretched into a sky that had been charred grey.

            “Ma, he’s in there!” Shion shouted, and he began pulling her again until they were in front of the wall, in front of the fire. He smashed his fists against the glass, and Karan did not try to pull her son away. “Help me! We have to break it, we have to save him – ”

            “Shion – ”

            “I’m coming!” Shion shouted at the glass, which was completely silent, even as a tree fell forward and smashed against it. Shion waited to hear the thud, the crackle of the flame’s teeth on wood, but was met by just the sound of his own fists, mutely thudding the wall of fire.

            “Shion, hon – ”

            “How do we break it down?” Shion asked desperately. He looked around at his neighbors, where they stood on their porches like statues as useless as their garden gnomes, staring back at the boy pummeling the fire.

            “Shion, sweetheart. If the tree couldn’t break it – ”

            “We’ve got to get him out of there!” Shion shouted. “Hey! Hey, we’re coming, I’m coming, I promise, I promise…”

            “Shion,” Karan said weakly, weak enough for Shion to ignore her, to shout louder than her.

            Shion continued to hit the glass, continued to shout. His knuckles hurt and it was hot and the fire pushed back and he looked up once and couldn’t see the end of it, couldn’t see where it met the coal sky, but he knew it was the same sky, so the wall must have ended somewhere.

            “Ma, I promised him, we have to get him out because I promised – ”

            His throat hurt too, but he knew the boy’s must hurt more, all that smoke and flame and surely that hurt more, so Shion shouted louder trying to hurt just as much.

            “I promised – ”

            Karan pulled her son to her, and Shion struggled against her arms, trying to hit the glass because maybe one more hit would do it, and he’d break it, crack it down the middle for the fire to spill out away from the village of the boy with the grey eyes.

            “Ma, let go, I need to – ”

            “I’m sorry, Shion.”

            “I don’t even know his name – ”

            “I know, I know…”

            “I never got to tell him – ”

            The fire was shaking even more violently, it was going to melt the wall, he could see the glass dripping, and it was dripping down his cheeks now, hot and wet –

            Shion fought against his mother’s hold until he’d freed one of his hands, and he pressed his palm against the glass, and it burned, but he left it there and waited for a hand to come out of the flames and press back.

            He waited until the flames died out, and the neighbors retreated to their houses.

            He waited as the smoke cleared, and the ruin of the forest was exposed, a graveyard of charred beauty.

            He waited despite his mother’s requests that he come inside, he waited as the glass cooled beneath his palm, he waited as night mixed its own paint of darkness in with the soot of smoke.

            He waited for the boy from the other side of the sky.

**

Three months after the fire, Shion stopped waiting by the glass where the boy never showed every day after school. He returned every couple days for another few months, but by the time a year had passed, he only spent a couple hours in the weekend doing homework beside it, or reading, before he retreated back inside where he didn’t have to look up at the graveyard of charred trees and nothingness any longer.

**

_four years later_

Shion was twelve years old and reading by the glass. He’d been pulled outside by the gentle sun and flirtatious breeze, drawn to the glass by the fact that he hadn’t sat beside it in months. He faced it out of habit and quickly became immersed in his book.

            Not immersed enough, however, to let the movement from the other side go unnoticed. Shion looked up, sure it was just a bird or other animal, but his heart was thudding all the same.

            A boy was walking towards him. A boy with grey eyes and nearly transparent skin and dark hair and a notepad hanging off the hook of two fingers. Shion could not stand up, his breath caught somewhere in his throat and his limbs immobile.

            The boy walked all the way up to the glass and, after a moment of hesitation, pressed his palm against it.

            Shion found himself able to move, jerked up, and pressed his own palm back, and his other hand too.

            “You’re alive!” he shouted at the boy, who, of course, could not hear.

            Shion needed his notepad, but it had been years since he’d brought it with him next to the glass. He wanted to go get it, but was scared to leave the glass, scared the boy would be gone again.

            The boy sat cross-legged, and Shion forced himself to sit too, in the same positions they had always occupied before, as if four years and a fire had not passed.

            _Hello, Shion._

            Four years – four years, and the boy wrote two words. Shion wanted to shout or to cry but did neither. He was hungry for more words. He held up a finger.

            “Wait,” he said, to the glass. “Wait one minute, okay?”

            The boy looked at him curiously. Of course he would have no idea what Shion had said, of course he could not hear him.

But he wrote a quick note, held it up.

            _Okay._

            Shion stared for only a second, then ran back to his house. His mother was at the bakery, leaving no one to witness Shion’s frantic search for a notepad. He found the one he used to use beneath his bed, grabbed a pen, and dashed back outside where the boy calmly sat.

            Shion flipped to a clean page, uncapped his pen, and stared. He realized he did not know what to write. He had so many things to ask, so many things to say.

            In the end, he wrote the truest.

            _I missed you._

            The boy stared at the words for a long time. The grey eyes shined and hardened. Shion waited because now that the boy was back, now that he was alive, time was nothing.

            A minute passed, then two. Somewhere in the middle of three, the boy stood up, dropped his notepad, and left.

            Shion watched him walk back into the graveyard of his old home, then looked back at his notepad, wondering at his own small smile.

            It was nice, to feel hopeful again.

**

When the boy showed himself again a week and a half later, Shion already had his greeting written out, but waited until the boy had sat and refused to press his palm against Shion’s for a full minute before giving up, dropping his hand, and turning the pad on him.

            _I’m happy you are safe. But you need to stop leaving me._

He expected the boy to leave him again, and was relieved to receive only a narrowing of grey eyes.

            Shion quickly scribbled his next note, his heart thudding, scared but knowing he needed to ask, he couldn’t not ask.

            _Is your family okay? Your sister?_

            Nezumi stared at the words, then slowly reached for the pad he had dropped and took his time to write his reply.

            _What color is your sky today, Shion?_

            Shion stared, read the message three times, then settled with the fact that his own questions would not be responded to, and that was okay for now. He looked up at the sky and wrote quickly.

            _Purple and splotchy. Yours?_

            They were under the same sky, but the boy looked up at his own side before replying.

            _Like a bruise._

            Shion was quick to scribble his reply. _Tell me your name._

_I think I’m taller than you now._

_I waited four years. You won’t tell me your name?_

_You need a haircut._

_What do I need to do to earn your name? Tell me, I’ll do it._

_Can you even see with those bangs?_

_You were in there and burning and I was shouting but I had no name to shout. Please just –_ Shion tore this note out and crumpled it. It would be no good, to show the boy this one. He would no doubt just walk away again. Instead, Shion shook his head at the grey eyes and gave in.

            _Yes, I can see fine. You’re one to talk. Your hair is to your chest._

And they resumed pointless conversation, but it wasn’t pointless, and it wasn’t just conversation. It was pieces of the boy’s life and pieces of Shion’s flung at each other through this glass until the sun set and the boy left, but not before finally placing his hand on the glass against Shion’s again.

**

Shion would not earn the boy’s name until his sixteenth birthday.

            The boy was waiting for him when he sat in his usual place. It was already dark, but he’d had dinner with his friend Safu, and his mother had made a cake, and only after eight could Shion escape to converse with the boy from the other half.

            _Happy birthday, Shion,_ the boy showed, after they touched hands through the glass.

            Shion smiled his thanks while the boy scribbled something else.

            _My hand is bigger than yours now. And I’m taller._

Shion narrowed his eyes, placed his hand back against the glass and waited for the boy to do the same.

            He was outraged to find the boy was right, but decided on denial.

            _They’re both the same,_ he wrote.

            _Bullshit._

_It’s too dark to tell anyway._

_I was able to tell since last week. I just wanted to wait until your birthday to share the news._

_Is that my birthday gift? Being told I’m shorter than you now?_

_Is there something else you wanted?_

Shion had hardly ever written a note faster, _Your name._

The boy laughed, and Shion’s heart sank. _I see wisdom hasn’t come with age._

_You’re horrible. It’s been eight years. Nearly nine._

_And you still haven’t earned my name. Who is the horrible one now?_

_I keep asking what I need to do to “earn it.”_

_That’s not how it works._

_You’re so annoying._

_Name calling will get you nowhere._

Shion gritted his teeth but let the matter drop. If he had learned anything about the boy in the past eight years, it was that he was stubborn, and quite irritatingly so.

            “Shion, come inside, it’s past midnight!” Karan called from the house, after a few more hours of scribbled conversation.

            “Coming!” Shion shouted over his shoulder. He turned back to the boy. They were sitting right up against the glass, as the darker it got, the harder it was to see their notes, though Shion knew to bring flashlights when they conversed at night.

            _Wait,_ the boy held up, before Shion could put his hand against the glass.

            Shion nodded and waited while the boy scribbled quickly.

            _When we first met, you wrote something that you refused to show me. What was it?_

Shion squinted, trying to remember, then skimmed through his notepad. It was the same one from years before – he kept adding pages to it, but liked to keep his past notes. When he found it, he remembered and laughed at the foolishness of his embarrassment as a child, holding it up. He supposed he’d been embarrassed as he had only known the boy for a month, at the time of writing it.

            _You’re my best friend,_ it said.

            The boy read it, paused, then wrote one word.

            _Nezumi._

            Shion stared, shook his head in confusion, waited while the boy wrote again.

            _My name._

            “Oh!” Shion exclaimed, and Nezumi laughed, as he always did whenever Shion forgot and accidentally spoke out loud. “Nezumi,” he said, but this time it wasn’t an accident – he wanted to know what it would sound like out loud, and he loved it immediately.

            _Nezumi_ , he wrote it back, showed it to the boy – to Nezumi – who only rolled his eyes and pressed his palm against the glass.

            Shion pressed his back. It had been a wonderful birthday.

**

For another year, they passed notes in this manner without much change in routine. A few months before Shion turned seventeen, Nezumi finally opened up about his parents, in a note randomly tossed into the middle of an argument about the importance of Calculus.

            _I can list several real world applications right now, if you want,_ Shion had written.

            Nezumi had taken a long time to respond, and Shion had watched him write lazily, not thinking anything of it. Shion’s heart had jumped to his throat as Nezumi turned his pad towards him, and he’d read: _My sister would have been twelve years old today – She should be twelve years old today. I don’t want to talk about her or my parents or the fire. I just wanted to say that because someone should know that she should have been twelve years old today._

The moment Shion had finished reading the note, he’d looked up at Nezumi, who’d ducked and shoved the pad back under his pen.

            Shion had waited, tried to think of what he could say – Nezumi had never brought up his family before since the fire.

            _Distract me. But not with Calculus._

            Shion had stared. The grey eyes had been wet but hard and almost angry. Shion had given one nod, pressed his pen into his own pad.

            _We’re reading_ Hamlet _in school, and I thought you could help me with the essay._

            Nezumi’s parents, sister, and the fire that took them were not mentioned again.

            But other things were. Everything else was. They never ran out of things to write, and when there was not time to converse, Shion would do his homework by the glass, or Nezumi would take naps against it.

            It was a few weeks after Shion’s seventeenth birthday that this routine began to change, though imperceptibly, at first, and then, only in Shion’s head.

            Nezumi was sleeping against the wall, curled like a cat, and fifteen minutes passed before Shion realized he had not even opened his textbook and had simply been staring at the boy since sitting down.

            No, that wasn’t right. Nezumi was no longer a boy – he was a man. He was tall, too tall for Shion to be able to deny that he’d been surpassed in height. He was just as skinny, but instead of lanky, he was lean, all broad shoulders and muscles under skin that, if anything, had gotten paler. His hair was longer, but he tied it up now, out of his face and his too sharp cheekbones. His lashes were painfully long and his smirk wonderfully familiar.

            Shion had begun having dreams about the man years before, but ignored them, denied them, convinced himself the intrusion of the man in his unconscious mind was inevitable what with the amount of time Nezumi occupied his conscious mind.

            Shion had fantasies, but that was all they were. He had not considered that his attraction to his friend was anything more than a healthy lust, which could only be natural and blamed on Nezumi’s undeniable and striking beauty.

            Lust, he could deal with. But whatever _this_ – this contentment of staring as the man slept – could mean, Shion didn’t want to consider.

            No matter how many evenings, how many skies, how many notes were shared, there would always be the glass.

            Though he had to admit, it felt thinner and thinner day by day. Sometimes, Shion was even certain he could feel Nezumi’s palm against his, or at the very least, some of the warmth from it, seeping through the cool glass.

**

_Nezumi._

            In a month, Shion would be eighteen.

            _Hmm?_

 _I’m in love with you._ Shion crossed it out, flipped the page. _I love you –_ No, that was just as bad, that was worse, he flipped the page again. _You complete –_ Shion could not even let himself finish that note. He flipped to another page, smoothed it with his palm, resisted the urge to look at Nezumi, who was no doubt watching him skeptically, perhaps with that smirk of his.

            _The world means nothing to me without you – Nezumi, nothing._ No, he couldn’t show that either, and crossed it out over and over, hoping his pen would run out of ink and there would be no way for him to say anything at all.

            He looked up then, finally, and Nezumi was not smirking. He was watching, carefully, and only looked away to write a quick note.

            _You should just say it._

            Shion stared at the words, in Nezumi’s lazy scrawl that he loved, that he needed. He did not know what Nezumi meant.

            Did the man know, somehow, what Shion wanted to say? Did this mean he felt the same way? If so, why didn’t he say it?

            Shion gripped his pen tightly, then let it fall loose from his hand, which he lifted to the glass. After a pause, Nezumi lifted his own hand and pressed it against his.

            “I love you, Nezumi. There is nothing, nothing but you.”

            He put his other palm on the glass, and Nezumi matched it, and Shion was on his knees, his eyes burning because this glass would always be there, but so would Nezumi, on the other half, under the other side of the sky.

            He ducked his head. He did not want Nezumi to see that his eyes were wet and threatening to drip. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass and pressed his hands further against it as if he could squeeze it between his and Nezumi’s palms, squeeze it into nothing.

            There was a shadow over his face, and Shion lifted only his eyes to see that Nezumi had copied his pose, was on his knees too with his forehead pressed against the glass against Shion’s. He was mouthing something, and Shion watched, but couldn’t understand because he kept going – then Shion realized.

            Nezumi was singing.

            Shion did not know how long they kneeled there, palms to palms and forehead to forehead.

            Not that it made a difference, as no matter how long they stayed, the glass between them stayed even longer still.

            That was the thing, about forever. It was the one span of time Shion did not know how to wait out. It was the only span of time that could keep him apart from this man, and it was the exact span of time for which Shion would love Nezumi, despite that.

 

THE END


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